Progettazione di energy harvesters vibrazionali per il monitoraggio di sistemi meccanici

The progressive reduction of power consumption of the most recent sensors and measuring devices, makes possible to replace the traditional supply by cables with wireless compact integrated electric generators; this allows the local power supply or wireless sensor networks. These strategies, linked to the definition of energy harvesting, are the topic of a number of researches addressed to the invention of systems with increasing efficiency, with versatile dynamic properties and based on electromechanical transduction principles appropriate for the specific application. This paper illustrates the properties and characteristics of the main system for vibration energy harvesting depending to the working principle. Then the more relevant design actions realized by the research group are described and the performances of different harvesters typologies are compared.